The Charge

The Case

Mill Creek Entertainment strikes again! The reigning king of Packaging Huge
Amounts of Loosely Connected Cinematic Crap Together unveils its newest offering
with Clash of the Olympians: a four-discs, dual-sided, no frills 16-movie
megapack of antiquated films starring huge meatheads swinging swords at each
other with the occasional moon man appearance. Here are the films that await you
on this set:

* Ali Baba and the Seven Saracens * The Avenger *
The Giant of Marathon * The Giants of Rome * The
Giants of Thessaly * The Goliath and the Sins of Babylon
* Hercules against the Mongols * Hercules Against the Moon
Men * Hercules and the Captive Women * Hercules and
the Masked Rider * Hercules and the Princess of Troy *
Hercules and the Tyrants of Babylon * Hercules Unchained * Herod the Great * Kindar the Invulnerable *
Spartacus and the Ten Gladiators

That's a lot of...material. As you can no doubt surmise, the worthless to
worthwhile ration is heavily tilted toward the former, but fans of bizarre,
low-budget goofiness can find some value in this enormous collection. My
favorite is Hercules and the Captive Women, which finds our hero pretty
much meeting one (singular) captive woman before doing battle with a rubber
iguana monster, a lion, and a snake. Then you have Hercules Against the Moon
Men a title no doubt familiar to Mystery Science Theater 3000 fans.
The Moon Men largely don't figure into the story until the end, but when they
hit and you see the beauty of their costumes and the nuance of...screw it, they
suck, just like pretty much every other movie on this set.

There is value in some late night community derision. Amazon currently has
the set available for $15, and if you and your friends enjoy lounging around
mercilessly making fun of Godawful films, it might be money worth investing. You
can have the dormmates throw in some cash. It's the cost of a large pizza.

Be warned that Clash of the Olympians features some of the worst DVD
technical treatments I've ever come across. The mono sound is unbearable,
sometimes indecipherable and the video quality fluctuates from passable to
nearly opaque, depending on the film. Packaging is equally awful, a fat plastic
box housing four, two-sided DVDs with four films on each.

The Verdict

Guilty of kicking me in my brain's crotch -- but there is a molecule of value
for the smart-asses out there.